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[Triaxx2]

The silo idea would be much easier to manage with minecarts. Being able to distribute food and booze via automated, sealed cart routes, allowing only carts to pass. Trade and military goods move the same way.

[HammerHand]

I almost always go with the central staircase, just for FPS/pathfinding's sake.  It's also really easy to make, expand, and remember where things are.  It usually goes something like this:

z-0:  Trade depot, main entrance, walls, temporary barracks to prevent cave adaptation among soldiers.
z-1:  Usually a soil layer, so farms & food production.
z-2:  Storage for all of the above.
z-3:  Meeting Hall (Connected to booze and food stockpiles on above level), Hospital, Well, and nobles' offices and dining rooms, as applicable.
z-4:  Goods Storage (3 rooms; North Room is for furniture, SouthEast Room is for crafts, Southwest room is for clothes)
z-5:  Industrial Complex (4 rooms:  Northwest is wood-based, Northeast is masonry/mechanics, Southeast is crafts/gems, Southwest is textiles/leather.  Each room holds 4 workshops surrounding a central staircase)
z-6:  Raw Materials Storage (4 rooms corresponding to the industries housed above them)
z-7:  Chronicle Level - A floor carved out as a sort of spiral in 4-block sections.  Every season, one wall section is engraved.  Every year, a statue is added to a corner or bend.
z-8-9:  Housing level.  I build 3x3 rooms in 5x5 blocks.  The rooms connect to those adjacent to them with doors and no hallways.  This makes counting rooms easy, so I know how many rooms I need versus how many I have.  100 rooms fit on a z-level this way without any of them being too far from the central staircase.  I'd never consider having more than 200 Dwarves, so two floors maximum.
z-10:  Crypts.  My crypts spread outward in short hallways that branch off into small rooms that each contain four coffins.  I usually put 4-6 such rooms in each hallway and partition the hallways with elaborate doors of matching material.  All crypts are smoothed stone, and never engraved.  The vertical hallways are much shorter than the horizontal ones, but they make great places for memorial slabs, statues, or extra coffins by making small recesses in the walls.  The larger squares where hallways intersect house statues or more coffins in their corners.  Alternatively, they function as nobles' tombs, when they desire them.
z-??:  Magma Operations.  I dig down to magma swiftly, because dealing with charcoal pisses me off.  I just set up my magma smelters and furnaces just above the magma, put their stockpiles around and on the level above them, and haul all produced items up (preferably with mine carts, these days).

Depending on what my embark site looks like, I also have to find a place to put the barracks (I prefer to build UP for the Barracks), and there's a jail in there somewhere.  I deal with the caverns by molding them to my designs whenever that's possible, which may require a lot of construction.  Then I strategically wall them off to avoid unplanned creature entrances.  Sometimes my meeting level takes an extra floor because I want to set up a "Dwarfbath" with a circle of four automated pumps... or with a shallow pool that all dwarves must enter to get to the dining room.

I set up little watchtowers when I can - small, one-tile rooms with four windows and four walls that stand on a single peg above-ground.  I put a bird in them.  The bird spots ambushes through the windows, and since it's one z-level above the ground, building destroyers never break its windows.  Birds practically live forever without such accidents, so replacement is rarely necessary.  I've heard of some people using dogs, and connecting their watch towers with elaborate underground tunnels to facilitate replacements.


But... what I'd LIKE to do?  Create a whole underground city of family-warrens, where each professional dwarf maintains a small home that includes their workshop, a bedroom for themselves and their spouse, and rooms for their children, all interconnected with winding "streets" and larger buildings.  Back when chasms still existed, I kept trying to build cities across the chasm, with windows peering into its darkness and bridges spanning the distance between.  This fortress design would be complicated and inefficient, but wildly organic and deeply personal.  It does not, however, handle migrant waves very well, and that is usually my problem implementing it.  I'm not sure how much stockpile magic would have to be worked with it, either.

[ExecratedDwarf]

Hammerhand:

Just lower the pop cap while you are constructing the elaborate fortress. Or turn hallways into dorms. I've done both and it helps a lot with migrants.

[Ruhn]

I set up little watchtowers when I can - small, one-tile rooms with four windows and four walls that stand on a single peg above-ground.  I put a bird in them.  The bird spots ambushes through the windows, and since it's one z-level above the ground, building destroyers never break its windows.  Birds practically live forever without such accidents, so replacement is rarely necessary.  I've heard of some people using dogs, and connecting their watch towers with elaborate underground tunnels to facilitate replacements.

It sounds like this would greatly improve the safety of fishing and lumber operations, I like it.

[Mushroo]

I make a big dormitory in the first soil layer next to the plump helmet farm. Meanwhile I send a miner to breach the caverns, so the soil layers will start to fill up with trees and herbs, and then seal the caverns off again. Oh yes and I make a carpenter's shop so I can have beds, tables, chairs, hatch covers, etc. To prevent bad thoughts from nakedness I usually make a loom and clothier's workshop in the 2nd or 3rd year and switch the plump helmet farm to pig tails 1 out of 4 seasons. Pretty much everything else (weapons, armor, barrels, buckets, gems, bars, silk, wool, etc) I obtain from trade.

[Vinsombra]

I've actually had thoughts churning for a new fort the last few weeks, one that was aesthetically designed; with FPS, stockpile efficiency, noise (minor in the newest versions), defense, and fluid flow needs in mind.  I've been thinking of including such concepts as wet-wall plans for water distribution, a shaft of gears for power distribution throughout the fort, multi-level factories suchs as obsidian and GCS silk production, leaving z levels for water distribution for mist generators, perhaps sharing floors with storage.  Also, once designed, there will be no simple traps except a few cage traps once in a while to provide entertainment in the arenas.  (Grand mega project 'traps' like the rapid reset magma-powered goblinite reclamation facility are planned)  The general concept will be:

Surface: three tier defenses (outer, inner, claimed), claimed area for grazing/lumber, outer defenses will be a wall with a bridge over a moat hooked to levers.  inner defenses will be a second wall with two bridge/moat combos, leaving the further one down and the close one closed, with the outer bridge open and kittens'detection units' pastured in the space between to detect ambushes with enough time to close the inner airlock.  In the case of migrants or merchants, once the otuer walls are passed, the outer airlock doors will be closed and the closer bridge will be lowered.  A third wall will completely enclose the pasture/farms/forest, and will only be accessable from within the fort.  Burrows will only allow haulers/butchers/lumberjacks to this area, and even then, only the completely enclosed section.  once the walls and bridges are finished, no dwarf will exit the fortress except to replace kittens detection units.


The fortress will be designed around a central spiral ramp, with central area for artifact display, central gathering areas for happy dwarf thoughts (noticing sublime statues, impressive upright weapons, etc.)  I'm debating with myself if I want to channel and rebuild or dig and engrave.  I'm leaning towards engraving and leaving the surface and it's wretched daystar for the zookeepers.  Proper dwarfs have cave adaptation.

Around the central column will radiate floors that are carved in either tiled, hexagonal, or other fractal designs, where possible, with the general floor-plan as such:

Here's the png I throw into DF helper for one floor of workshops using DFHelper.  This is sized for a 4x4 embark.



Which translates into this:

http://imgur.com/n5big

-1: farms (food/tree/cloth) and plumbing access for mist generators.  Access tunnels to the surface will also punch through this layer. In the case of river or aquifer, a water tap will also likely be installed on this layer, since it's more economical to use gravity to distribute water.  The remaining space will be hollowed out (in an aestecially pleasing manner) for tree growth.  Burrows will only allow farmers, haulers, lumberjacks, and butchers in and through this area.  There will also be the top floor of an automated GCS silk farm here, with two tall (5 z level) pillars, upon which there will be one goblin and one tame GCS, or one tame GCS and one kitten.  On the side where silk will be thrown, there will be a bridge linked to a pressure plate set to trigger when a dwarf walks over it, which will drop the strands 5 z-levels down below, where they will be gathered for production.

In the case of deep soil, -2 will be tree farm and plumbing access for mist generators, with said plumbing plans removed from -1.  There will be a hole in this floor for the silk factory.

-3 (first stone layer)  in the first stone layer you will find barracks surrounding the central column, and farm-product processing facilities further out from there.  I plan to always have 4 squads on duty, and they will be located in each of the four directions from the central column, training.  in the case of invaders, they will be activated but remain in the central column.  I (partially) decided on ramps and a large central area to cut down on accidental falls down stairways or ledges on the part of dwarves.  additionally, should the outside detectors somehow fail or fail to get replaced, invaders will not be able to enter the fortress without passing at least twenty steel clad angry beards.  Past the training grounds, there will be some modest dining rooms and pantries to feed both the farmers, the crop processing dwarves, butchers and lumberjacks.  Past the dining rooms, there will be farmers workshops to process plants into intermediate products, querns to grind up powders, a butcher shop, a tannery.  Mist generators will be positioned over barracks, dining rooms and workshops (actually located on -2).  Burrows will split the level, keeping non military dwarves out of the barracks, except for haulers (not this is the closest to 'outside' most dwarves will ever get, except the poor bastard who has to go perform maintenance on the [/s]kittens[/s] detection units.  There will be holes in this floor for the silk and obsidian factories.

-4 in the layer immediately below the processing and barracks floor, there will be plumbing and power for mist generators (for -5), and stockpiles designed to receive food plants, and other products produced by the workshops above.  There will be holes in this floor for the silk and obsidian factories.

-5 will be the primary production and trade layer, to include cloth, stone, leather, wood and consumables such as food, and drink.  Stockpiles which are above will dictate placement of workshops, or vice versa.  rooms closest to the central column will be finished goods stockpiles, accepting clothes, crafts, whatever I'm producing to trade.  further out form the column will be the workshops producing goods to keep or be consumed by the fortress, such as furniture or booze/food.  Somewhere on this floor is the gathering room of the silk factory.  The gathering floor of the obsidian factory will also be on this floor, likely at the outside edge.  I use a typical three floor obsidian factory with a bottom floor lava in and a second level water drop.  it will also be where the Trade Depot is located.

-6 will be plumbing for mist generators for (-7) and storage for finished goods to be kept or used by the fort.

-7 will be the primary living/admin/entertainment floors, with large central rooms for hospital (will have a well punched into the plumbing on layer -8 ), main dining room, lavish prison, etc.  I usually use another large (sealed) room for levers and the fortress bookkeeper/levermaster.  He gets food and booze delivered to him via dump sites over holes in his roof.  I typically leave space here for oddities such as the arena or other things that I don't always think of, and leave most of the actual sleeping rooms for level -9.

It's about this level that I start getting nervous about hitting the caverns.  If I do punch into the caverns, I pray that I don't hit an underground sea, and for the most part continue my design with constructions instead of digging.  I usually just punch into and completely seal off the column from the caverns.  if I need a water source still, I'll dig over near it, punch a hole into it, put a grate over the hole and start my pump stack to fill the wet-wall.

-8 continues the pattern by being mostly plumbing, except that over the dwarf rooms, plumbing requires a lot more space, since it has to be distributed to much smaller rooms.

-9 is the bloc housing, usually fractally designed.  several rooms are intentionally larger, and quite a few rooms will be made more valuable by mineral deposits.  Try to determine the most valuable rooms and earmark them for nobility.  The other nice rooms are given to founders or legendary craftsmen.

here I usually leave five floors of exploratory mining between the housing and crypts.  I try to dig out everything that I want to claim as early as possible to get the noise complaints over quickly.  After the five layers, I place the crypts because I like to engrave the crypt when the dwarf is interred, and this would cause noise complaints if it were within 4 z levels of the beds.  I will also often hollow out large sections (usually in tiled or hexagonal patterns) and flood them in order to grow trees in a safe area.  I'll usually mark off a good 40 x 40 area on two floors and build my power plant in this area as well.

Somewhere at the bottom of the fort, near the magma, I'll place the forges.  If it's far enough away, I'll make the forges their own burrow with their own complete ecosystem of farming, housing, dining, etc.

Some variables that will effect this layout would be early magma access, sand/clay locations, aquifers, !!FUN!!, etc.  Other than that, this is my general plan for a fortress, and it is always tweaked here and there depending on my embark site.  I suppose I could, if I wished, get into the advanced world gen properties and ensure that I always have 15-20 floors before the caverns, but I want to hit the caverns usually, to release the spores and have a 'known' water source.

A few things that I'm usually 'missing' in my designs are a dwarf cleaning system, and some of the 'extra' crafts, such as bee industry, fishing, etc.  I will usually tack on a dwarf cleaning system on every 'exit' from the fortress.  But it usually ends up that I have blood and vomit covered military dwarves and the central area near the barracks.  Which I usually leave alone, for flavor.  I've heard if you define an area as an inactive meeting area, dwarves will clean it pretty quickly, so if you wanted to improve your FPS, you could clean it that way.  As for syndrome inducing contaminantes, I'll send the military out to meet them if I even allow the military to engage them rather than guiding them into a trap and saving them for the arena.

Of course, while I'm digging/smoothing and laying out plumbing, the dwarves usually are living in the rain on the surface within a wooden pallisade until the first few floors are open enough to put up temporary workshops and bedrooms.  But the first priority after hitting enough stone is building the three layers of walls to seal up the airlocks with.  Another immediate need is the lever room.  Once you have the lever room dug out, drop the next (preferably young, single, or if available, a vampire!) migrant in there and drop him the materials that he will need and assign the labors he'll need to build a bed, coffers, cabinet, etc.  Give it a sub room with-in if you'd like so you can lock him in his bedroom while the mechanic expands the lever capabilities to completely prevent the possibility of socializing.

[birdy51]

My prefered strategy is what I term canyon burrows. Essentially, I try to find a spawn with a river canyon, and habitate it to the best of my abilities. I get bonus points because my current river canyon has a waterfall, and then it splits into T! The entrance to the fort is a ramped pathway leading down into the earth, towards the canyon. Once I hit the canyon wall, I build a bridge. This will serve as my entryway to the fortress.

That finished, I try to create flowing bridgeways down the canyon wall, connecting burrow to burrow to burrow in one mass line. It's kind of cool to looks at. Shortcuts exist to make life easier, but I make sure that these shortcuts can be shut down in an emergancy, effectively being able to isolate one burrow from another. The closer the dwarves are to the entrance, the more danger they will have, so my burrow setup goes like this: Military, Crafts, Home Burrows. I have yet to have a strong mining operation yet, but I plan on assigning a special burrow just for miners.

[monjoe]

My current design is a 3x3 staircase in the middle with 4 auxiliary stairs further out.
z-0 Trade depot
z-1 Farms
z-2 or first rock barracks with trapped entrance
z-3 workshops
z-4 storage
z-5 dining hall with 8 bedroom wings expanding outward
z-6 noble quarters, dorm, hospital, offices
z-7 crypt and refuse piles
z-8 beginning of mines

[Broseph Stalin]

Central Floorplan.

Very efficient, very aesthetically pleasing.



These are my quarters. I usually stack them about three high to prevent dwarves from walking further than they have to but those branches can be stretched very easilly without compromising the design. I like to take the north branch and make the rooms 5x5 for nobles.



These are my stockpiles. The 3x3's are for workshops and the 5x11's are the actual stockpiles. I usually use the triangles for nestboxes.



That's my Dining Hall on the left and my hospital on the right. You get the gist. It's much easier to go up and down Z levels than travel across them so jobs get done very quickly.

Building vertically with a central floorplan makes it easy to expand provided you do your ore mining as far away from the fortress as you can.

[Triaxx2]

A few thoughts to expand on Broseph's Plan. If you dig out every other space between the bedroom entrances, and fill those extra holes with statues it increases happy thoughts, because they see them as they move about.

The other is to take that bedroom design, expand it to four by four, and create it in a three level design. Mid-level is the work shops, connected by up down stairs to the upper level which is raw goods, and the bottom, which is finished goods. Then you can connect those to a main walk way and have the finished goods hauled away with minecarts. Up to the Trade Depot for example.

[HammerHand]

Also on Broseph's design:

3x3 rooms are terrible for workshops.  All workshops have impassable tiles, and some of these will block the doorways leading from one 3x3 room to another.  It is possible, then, that some of your workshops may become inaccessible, or remarkably inefficient to reach, from certain directions.  It is also possible to trap a dwarf between two recently-finished workshops, leading to slow and untimely death.  This is why I use large rooms, big enough to put a space between the workshops and the walls, and between the other workshops. Like so:

* = Workshop tile
I = Support
X = Up/Down staircase (up to output stockpile, down to input stockpile)


+---------+
|         |
| *** *** |
| ***I*** |
| *** *** |
|  I X I  |
| *** *** |
| ***I*** |
| *** *** |
|         |
+---------+

Plus doors where you will, of course.  This is just the basic idea.  Supports are passable, so they don't keep your dwarves from reaching things.  They're also aesthetically pleasing - especially if you make them out of the right color of stone blocks.

Other than the 3x3 workshops, I really like your designs!  Your central shaft looks cooler than mine (I use a 5x5 square but it's otherwise the same), and I like the triangles that appear around it.

[HammerHand]

Hammerhand:

Just lower the pop cap while you are constructing the elaborate fortress. Or turn hallways into dorms. I've done both and it helps a lot with migrants.

I think I've attempted this, but every time I try to lower the pop cap it appears to be inexplicably ignored.  Maybe I'm just not setting it at the right time or... something.  I'll try again!

[Broseph Stalin]

Also on Broseph's design:

3x3 rooms are terrible for workshops.  All workshops have impassable tiles, and some of these will block the doorways leading from one 3x3 room to another.  It is possible, then, that some of your workshops may become inaccessible, or remarkably inefficient to reach, from certain directions.  It is also possible to trap a dwarf between two recently-finished workshops, leading to slow and untimely death.  This is why I use large rooms, big enough to put a space between the workshops and the walls, and between the other workshops. Like so:

* = Workshop tile
I = Support
X = Up/Down staircase (up to output stockpile, down to input stockpile)


+---------+
|         |
| *** *** |
| ***I*** |
| *** *** |
|  I X I  |
| *** *** |
| ***I*** |
| *** *** |
|         |
+---------+

Plus doors where you will, of course.  This is just the basic idea.  Supports are passable, so they don't keep your dwarves from reaching things.  They're also aesthetically pleasing - especially if you make them out of the right color of stone blocks.

Other than the 3x3 workshops, I really like your designs!  Your central shaft looks cooler than mine (I use a 5x5 square but it's otherwise the same), and I like the triangles that appear around it.

Actually since every single workshop has an entrance at the north south east and west the absolute worst efficiency hit you can take is one additional step. Instead of a dwarf moving three tiles to the right to access a stockpile if that direction is blocked by say a jewlers shop he goes two tiles south and two tiles southeast. It's possible to have that exasperated by additional workshops but avoiding things like that is another aspect of fortress planning.

When you change your pop cap children will continue to be born and it won't be honored until a migrant wave actually puts you over it.